East Asian Studies Department and Program Newsletter 2011-12 The newsletter of Princeton University’s East Asian Studies Department and Program is published annually in September by the East Asian Studies Program and is also available online. Unless otherwise stated, all activities reported are sponsored and orga- nized by the East Asian Studies Program or Department, either solely or in collaboration with other departments or programs on campus. News and comments are welcome and should be addressed to the Program Coordinator. Design/Editorial: Beate Witzler Email: [email protected] Phone: 609.258.9350 Fax: 609.258.2099 Photo Credits: Cover image of Jones Hall taken by Brandon Ermita. Haniwa tomb figure ca. 6th century Japan on p. 6 courtesy of Princeton University Art Museum, museum purchase with funds given by Duane E. Wilder, Class of 1951 [y1992 2], photo by Bruce M. White. Image of Buddha wall at Beihai Park in Beijing on p. 21 by Cara Healey. Crescent Moon Lake, Dunhuang, Gansu Province on p. 24 by Richard Kent. Drathang Bodhisattva, 12c. Tibet, on p. 25 by Stephen F. Teiser. Upwards, Seoul, South Korea, on p. 27 by Chloe Ferguson ‘13. 2010 photo contest of the Office of International Programs. Apsara on p. 29 by Ben Elman. Phiyang, 11c. Library, Tibet, on p. 34 by Stephen F. Teiser. The Path on the Wall, Beijing, China, by Sarah Sims ‘11. 2010 photo contest of the Office of International Programs. Tokyo tower on p. 39 by Cara Healey. Shang Dynasty bronze axe, Qingzhou, on back page by Stephen F. Teiser. Contents: Director’s Letter 3 Department and Program News 4 Undergraduates 9 Graduate Students 14 Fellows and Visitors 20 Faculty 21 Program Events 26 Associated Programs 29 Research Projects & Conferences 31 Library News 34 Alumni 35 Director’s Letter September 2011 The mission of the Program is to support teaching and research about China, Korea, and Japan throughout the uni- versity. We administer a program for majors in different departments to formalize their study of East Asia through a certificate. We fund undergraduates studying languages during the summer. We assist graduate students when they take courses abroad, conduct research, and write their dissertations. We contribute to the East Asian Library for the acquisition and cataloguing of books. We sponsor a weekly lecture series and numerous conferences, work- shops, and performances. We provide funding for numerous faculty positions. Our goal is to ensure that Princeton maintains a vibrant environment for students and teachers engaged in Asian studies. Last year many of our students and faculty were caught up in the natural and man-made disasters engulfing Japan in the early spring—fortunately, all without injury. At least fourteen current Princetonians were in Japan on March 11, 2011: eight graduate students, two undergraduates, two researchers, one faculty member, and one staff mem- ber. Virtually all of them were involved in relief efforts on their own, while the Princeton campus saw a wide range of aid efforts organized by students and community members, including the Million Cranes Project. Many alumni have been involved as well. This summer, Princeton administered two projects taking students to Japan: Princeton- in-Ishikawa, which annually serves 50 students (25 from Princeton) in a language and home-stay program, and a new Global Seminar, Performance and Practice in Kyoto, taught by Thomas Hare (Comparative Literature). Martin Collcutt (former director of the Program in East Asian Studies) and I corresponded directly with Tanimoto Masu- nori, Governor of Ishikawa Province, our sponsor and host for PII, noting our support and concern, and he wrote back expressing thanks and urging us to move ahead with the program. In the end, both summer programs were held as scheduled with great success, and the laborious contingency plans prepared by the directors of the two programs did not have to be activated. On a related note, this coming academic year we are fortunate to be able to appoint Satsuki Takahashi as a visitor in the East Asian Studies Department, one of whose courses will focus on Japanese and East Asian responses to natural disasters. Her academic interests thus pair nicely with those of Everett Zhang (East Asian Studies), whose current research examines the process of public mourning in the wake of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake and other disasters in China. In 2011 a near-record number of students earned a certificate in East Asian Studies: twenty-two students completed language and content courses and submitted independent work in all four divisions of the university (engineer- ing, sciences, humanities, social science). Man Yee (Mandy) Lee ’11 received the Leigh Buchanan Bienen and Henry S. Bienen Senior Thesis Prize for her thesis, entitled Forged by Flames: The Evolution of Fire Disaster Planning in Traditional Chinese Architecture. Our funds supported thirty-eight graduate students throughout the university pursuing research on East Asia over the summer, in places ranging from Turkey (archives on Chinese science) and Venice (Chinese art in the Biennale) to the more customary libraries and museums in Shanghai, Tokyo, and Seoul. More than forty undergraduates received our grants for intensive summer language programs in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. The East Asian Studies Program sponsored more than twenty-five lectures by world-renowned scholars and performers, including some delivered in Chinese and Japanese. Topics ranged widely, including the understanding of Islam in Japan, the history of central Eurasia, Chinese investment in African nations, and linear algebra in ancient Chinese mathe- matics. Our faculty hosted conferences on topics like Buddhism and Daoism in Chinese religion, New Asian Music, and Early Chinese Manuscripts, and an EAS-funded research cluster convened seven different workshops on the general topic of the “Early Modern” in Asia. East Asian Studies Newsletter 3 Department and Program News Looking ahead, we expect to use our resources to sustain vibrant teaching and research about Asia and to meet new challenges. We are excited by the new faculty appointments described in these pages, and we are hopeful that senior faculty members entering retirement will remain active members of the EAS community. We are de- lighted to help support a new Contemporary China Colloquium, a graduate-student led forum for the presentation and discussion of research. Such endeavors, bridging the social sciences and the humanities, are very encourag- ing. We also send our congratulations to Benjamin Elman, Gordon Wu ‘58 Professor of Chinese Studies, who was awarded a Distinguished Achievement Award by the Mellon Foundation in early 2011. In addition to being a great honor, the award has important institutional implications, since he is using the award to help fund several collab- orative ventures, including multi-year postdoctoral fellowships in early modern Chinese studies at Princeton and an academic consortium between Princeton, Fudan University, and Tokyo University. We look forward to hosting the annual meeting of the regional scholarly society in our discipline, the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies. The conference, chaired by David Leheny (Henry Wendt III ‘55 Professor of East Asian Studies), will be held on the Princeton campus October 21-23, 2011. The first day will be a series of workshops on teaching about Asia for secondary school teachers, while October 22-23 will see nearly 40 panels and almost 200 papers given by scholars from the region, including many faculty and Ph.D. students from Princeton. Special challenges in the coming year include a sharp increase in the number of Ph.D. students depending on a sixth year of support (supplied by the Program in East Asian Studies, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and others) in order to complete their dissertations. Such support is crucial for research in the field of East Asian Studies, and we are committed to maintaining it. At the same time, we are rationalizing, regu- larizing, and tightening our policies. A variety of departments will also be struggling with the question of how to sustain strengths and develop new ones as senior faculty working on China, Korea, and Japan enter retirement. We welcome all newcomers to Princeton. We hope new EAS graduate students from all departments will stop by the EAS Program Office in 219 Frist to say hello and meet Richard Chafey, Program Manager, and Beate Witzler, Pro- gram Coordinator. We also welcome ongoing and new undergraduates to visit and learn more about the language and course requirements for EAS Certificates. We hope to see faculty, students, and other members of the univer- sity community at the many events we sponsor throughout the year. Stephen F. Teiser D.T. Suzuki Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion Director, Program in East Asian Studies Department and Program News New Faculty Members in the East Asian Studies Department Paize Keulemans (Ph.D. University of Chicago, 2004) started studying Chinese language and culture in 1986 at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Since then, he has studied and taught Chinese language and literature in a variety of places: Nankai University, Cambridge University, National Taiwan University, the University of Chicago, Beijing University, Columbia University, and, most recently, Yale. After some twenty odd years, he finally feels ready to begin teaching Chinese literature at Princeton. Keulemans’ research interests are found